{"title":"Sayings and doings in practices: Enhancing practice-driven institutionalism with insights from the philosophy of embodiment","authors":"Jan Goldenstein, Peter Walgenbach","doi":"10.1177/01708406241266314","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The practice-driven perspective in organizational institutionalism has proposed that what actors say and do is decisive for the enactment of practices in everyday situations. However, this perspective has predominantly considered the role of doings and has disregarded the distinct role of sayings used in everyday situations. Our theoretical argument proposes the co-constitutive coexistence of sayings and doings in the enactment of practices that explains why and when doings inform specific sayings and why and when sayings prefigure specific doings. Theorizing this coexistence reveals when it is that sayings bolster the reproduction and stabilization of doings, when they contribute to change, and when sayings cannot coordinate doings because actors literally cannot understand one another. We argue that the consideration of the coexistence of sayings and doings is relevant for practice-driven institutionalism, as it enables the differentiation of the situated impact of doings and sayings on the development of practices. To develop this argument, we build on insights from the embodiment perspective within the philosophy of mind (i.e., philosophy of embodiment), which suggests that the body and its sensorimotor states in practices play an instrumental role in cognition and language use.","PeriodicalId":48423,"journal":{"name":"Organization Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Organization Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406241266314","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The practice-driven perspective in organizational institutionalism has proposed that what actors say and do is decisive for the enactment of practices in everyday situations. However, this perspective has predominantly considered the role of doings and has disregarded the distinct role of sayings used in everyday situations. Our theoretical argument proposes the co-constitutive coexistence of sayings and doings in the enactment of practices that explains why and when doings inform specific sayings and why and when sayings prefigure specific doings. Theorizing this coexistence reveals when it is that sayings bolster the reproduction and stabilization of doings, when they contribute to change, and when sayings cannot coordinate doings because actors literally cannot understand one another. We argue that the consideration of the coexistence of sayings and doings is relevant for practice-driven institutionalism, as it enables the differentiation of the situated impact of doings and sayings on the development of practices. To develop this argument, we build on insights from the embodiment perspective within the philosophy of mind (i.e., philosophy of embodiment), which suggests that the body and its sensorimotor states in practices play an instrumental role in cognition and language use.
期刊介绍:
Organisation Studies (OS) aims to promote the understanding of organizations, organizing and the organized, and the social relevance of that understanding. It encourages the interplay between theorizing and empirical research, in the belief that they should be mutually informative. It is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal which is open to contributions of high quality, from any perspective relevant to the field and from any country. Organization Studies is, in particular, a supranational journal which gives special attention to national and cultural similarities and differences worldwide. This is reflected by its international editorial board and publisher and its collaboration with EGOS, the European Group for Organizational Studies. OS publishes papers that fully or partly draw on empirical data to make their contribution to organization theory and practice. Thus, OS welcomes work that in any form draws on empirical work to make strong theoretical and empirical contributions. If your paper is not drawing on empirical data in any form, we advise you to submit your work to Organization Theory – another journal under the auspices of the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) – instead.